


Bright Tonight

by enigma731



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: F/M, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 15:23:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/pseuds/enigma731
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint plans to spend Christmas brooding, drinking, and watching Dog Cops. Natasha has other ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bright Tonight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sgteam14283](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sgteam14283/gifts).



> Set roughly after the events of Hawkeye #6, with additional inspiration from Avengers Assemble #5. Some references will make more sense if you’re familiar with the context, but it’s not required reading at all. 
> 
> Thanks to [samalander](http://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander/works), [sugarfey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarfey/pseuds/sugarfey/works), and [frea_o](http://archiveofourown.org/users/frea_o/pseuds/frea_o/works) for beta and cheerleading. 
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 

From the beginning, we were always going to fail  
We were the next thing that the world could not wait to tear down  
Off balance in our own minds  
Off balance in the ways we looked to everybody else  
On and on all summer long, we never stood a chance  
Sky bright tonight  
Live forever always bright tonight  
([X](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzfYS9vL_rc))

It isn’t that being alone on Christmas is actually _new._

Clint has made a habit of it in the past, has practically made an art form out of falling asleep on the couch to sickening Hallmark movies and greasy Chinese food. There were years when that was preferable, really, to spending the holidays fighting with Bobbi, who perpetually wanted him to be safer and before that with Natasha, who wanted him to be more dangerous. 

Things have changed, though he realizes it a little too late (as always.) He’s finally allowed himself to grow accustomed to having people around—finally, on some level, begun to believe that maybe they’ll stay. 

Simone and the children disappear to a grandparent’s house after three days of sharing his television, and the sudden silence in the apartment is frigid as the reminder that if they don’t reappear safe after the holidays, it will be his fault. He waits until Christmas Eve to call Kate, who of course ignores all four of his attempts. (He thinks he might actually be concerned if she wanted to talk to him, but the rejection still stings.) 

After that he loses track of time, afternoon blending into evening in a haze of beer and televised tender family moments that seem more farfetched to Clint than an alien invasion—he’s saved the world from actual aliens several times, after all, and never seen anything like these families. 

He isn’t aware of falling asleep this time, but it must happen because the knock on the door startles him out of a dream that immediately dissipates, leaves his skin crawling. Clint sits up in a rush, which makes the room swim a little, and scrambles to gather up the empty bottles on the table, unsuccessfully attempting to tamp down the overflowing garbage can in the kitchen before giving up and shoving them into a random closet. There’s a muffled sound of glass breaking after he shoves the cabinet shut, and he winces.

He’s made it most of the way to the door by the time the second barrage of knocking begins, and he hesitates for a moment, wondering if he ought to double back and grab his bow before opening it. That would be the sensible thing to do, given his recent joyride through the city with a burlap sack over his head. He’s expecting it to be Kate, though, and if it _is_ one of the tracksuits—well, maybe it would be for the best to let them take him out and be done with it, leave the rest of the building that much safer. 

“I was starting to think you might have died in there,” says Natasha, when he opens the door. She peers over his shoulder into the apartment. “Actually, maybe I wasn’t so far off.”

Clint blinks at her. She looks deceptively harmless in a big fluffy coat, melting snowflakes nested in her hair, and a plastic bag full of takeout containers in a gloved hand. She’s also one of the last people he’s expected to see, though now that he thinks about it, the mansion is probably deserted tonight. 

“I brought food,” says Natasha, when he fails to come up with any sort of coherent greeting. “That means I won’t have to fight my way in, right? It _is_ Christmas.” She pushes past him without waiting for a response, and the next thing he knows, his arms are full of her coat, which he clumsily hangs in the closet by the door that’s mostly full of arrows in need of repair. 

Clint raises an eyebrow as she crosses the room, equal parts surprised and a little bit suspicious. “You do Christmas now?”

“For a given definition of Christmas.” Natasha gives his couch a look like she needs to make sure it won’t bite her before sitting down gingerly. It probably appreciates the consideration, he thinks. She reaches into the bag and begins arranging Chinese takeout containers amongst the remaining debris on his table. 

He watches for a long moment, the way her fingers move deftly to open containers, the way she’s somehow managed to arrive with all of his favorites despite the fact that he can’t remember whether she ever shared this particular pseudo-tradition with him. It sends a little thrill of _something_ through him, the way her choices speak simultaneously of attentiveness and a hint of a threat. 

“Are you going to sit?” asks Natasha, when she’s finished with her setup. “Or are you just going to stand there and watch me eat all of this by myself? Because I’m good with either, but I’m thinking you should probably have some food, being that you smell like you fell out of a bar on three dollar beer night.”

Clint opens his mouth to protest that last, but then he shakes his head, grabs two plates he’s relatively sure are clean, and sits beside her on the couch. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought I was feeding you,” she says impassively, and snags one of the plates, scooping rice onto it with an elegance that ought to be impossible with cheap splintery chopsticks. 

He doesn’t buy that for even a second, because Natasha rarely ever does anything at face value, and there’s no way food is just food. It’s a strategy, chess pieces laid out in some sort of plan. “What _else_ are you doing here, Nat?”

“Avengers business,” says Natasha, which is so perfectly plausible that he’s sure it’s a bluff. “You missed a meeting. After last time, Steve thought it would be a good idea to make sure you weren’t in the hospital somewhere. Or a dumpster.”

”Except,” says Clint, a little smugly, “that Stark was just here a couple days ago, so he knows I’m alive. And you wouldn’t just come over to see if I was here, not without at least trying to call first.”

“And would that ancient answering machine of yours have told you if I _did_ call while you were out shooting your neighbor’s satellite dish?” Natasha grabs a piece of orange chicken with her chopsticks, showing the barest hint of tooth as she eats it.

“I haven’t been out,” Clint deflects, and doesn’t even bother to ask how she knows about the mishap with Simone’s cable. He accepted a long time ago that Natasha will always know exactly as much information as she wants, regardless of foolish things like logistics and probability. 

“More reason for someone to check on you.” She hands him the container of chicken with a glint her eye that makes him realize he’s just walked right into her trap, confirmed that he hasn’t left the building in the past five days, not even to train with Kate. 

Clint feels a sudden flare of anger at the look on her face, at the very idea that she thinks anyone needs to monitor him like he isn’t an adult, like he hasn’t been perfectly capable of taking care of himself since long before he was actually grown. “So that’s why you stopped by? ‘Cause you thought I was—what, pining?”

“You don’t pine,” says Natasha. “You brood. You’re a champion brooder.”

“I’m not brooding,” he snaps, piling more food onto his plate though he isn’t exactly hungry. “I am taking a vacation. It is Christmas.”

“Right,” she says skeptically. “And now you’re also not sulking.”

Clint opens his mouth to retort, to ask her whether attempting to be responsible for an _entire building_ is somehow sulking, but he’s interrupted by the ball of yellow fur that comes bounding down the stairs, evidently drawn by the smell of the food. 

“Down!” Clint yelps, a moment too late as Lucky knocks the remainder of the chicken and rice off his place, then sucks it off the floor like the world’s most efficient four-legged vacuum cleaner. “Aw, Lucky, no.”

For a moment Natasha just stares, saying nothing as Lucky finishes the chicken and looks up at her plate with eager eyes. He brushes past Clint’s legs and sits at her feet, gazing expectantly without making a move.

“You got a dog?” asks Natasha, and continues eating with absolutely no concern for her food. 

“Yes,” says Clint. “I mean—I didn’t _get_ —He sort of—Yeah, he’s my dog.”

“And you think that’s a good idea?” 

He can hear all her protestations already, all the reasons why someone like him isn’t cut out for being a responsible pet owner—risky job, not home enough, regularly forgets to feed self, let alone dependent animal.

“Yeah,” he says stubbornly, because he is not about to tell her where Lucky came from, not about to let her connect it to the many reasons why he isn’t leaving home right now. If he’s honest with himself, he refuses to let saving Lucky become one more in the string of bad decisions he’s been making lately. “I think it’s a great idea.”

Natasha chews her food thoughtfully for a moment, then looks up to meet his eyes again. “Doesn’t your bow get jealous?”

She says it so matter-of-factly that it takes Clint’s brain a moment to catch up and realize that she’s joking.

“Just because I’m not--” he barrels ahead in defense, then closes his mouth again and blinks at her. “What?”

“Your bow,” says Natasha, nodding to the hooks where it hangs over the couch. “Doesn’t she get jealous? I mean, she’s used to being your number one girl.”

Clint clears his throat, tries to get his bearings back. “She still _is_ ,” he says very seriously. “Lucky is my trusty sidekick.”

Lucky looks up at the sound of his name, fixing Clint with an expression he swears the dog must have picked up from Kate. 

“Did you hear what he called you?” Natasha asks Lucky, setting her plate aside. She reaches down to stroke the top of his head, murmuring something Clint recognizes as Russian. Lucky takes two steps closer and sniffs her knee.

“What did you say to him?” Clint narrows his eyes. He’s never had her gift for languages, no matter how many times she’s tried to teach him.

“Lucky dog,” says Natasha. “His name.” 

She says something else then, the words falling from her lips too rapidly for him to even attempt to make out. Lucky evidently understands, though, courtesy of his time with the tracksuits. He flops onto the floor, rolling over once completely before doing another half-turn to expose his belly, legs dancing happily in the air when Natasha obliges and scratches him there. 

“My dog takes directions from you,” says Clint, swallowing down an irrational flare of jealousy at _that_ revelation. Lucky doesn’t do anything on command for him, though he does occasionally sit for Kate. Maybe he has a thing for terrifying women. 

“I speak his language,” says Natasha, and murmurs something else that makes Lucky leap easily up onto the couch beside her before sitting back on his haunches obediently. “Look, I speak yours too.” She smiles sweetly. “Thank you for taking the trash to the kitchen, Clint. It’s very polite, since I brought dinner.”

He glares at her for a moment before deciding that there’s no good answer but to obey. It would be stupid to start a fight over garbage, especially when she’s right, and especially in front of his dog. Wordlessly he gathers up the empty containers and chopsticks into a pile, which he carries precariously out of the room. 

It takes a few minutes to sort things out, tie off the current trash bag and find a new one among his current obstacle course of boxes. When he gets back to the living room, Natasha’s turned the television to _It’s a Wonderful Life_ , and Lucky has his head in her lap, eyes half-closed in pleasure as she scratches his ears. Clint pauses in the doorway, watching them. For a moment it seems like an impossible image, exactly the sort of thing Natasha would have rejected outright, once. But it fits her now, and he thinks about the ways that she’s changed in the years he’s known her, the way she’s learned to reshape the sharp edges of herself until they fit together with the rest of her team, the way she’s never really ceased being a force in his own life. 

“You’re brainwashing my dog,” he grumbles as he crosses the room back to her, though it’s half-hearted at best.

“Yep,” says Natasha, looking up at him. “Sit, Clint.”

He’s sinking into the cushions before he realizes he’s managed to obey her yet again, but this time he can’t really bring himself to care. He finds himself watching her out of the corner of his eye as George Bailey dances into the swimming pool on the screen. She looks relaxed, he thinks, but not quite happy, the lightness never quite reaching her eyes. He feels a sudden swell of affection for her, has to resist the urge to reach over and touch her.

“You want the moon?” Clint quotes instead, because apparently the alcohol still in his system is helping his death wish right along. “Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down.”

Natasha rolls her eyes, her fingers still stroking Lucky’s fur absently. “No way. You’d have to find a way to shoot it down for me.”

Clint shrugs. “Lasso arrow. Okay, so the throwing part was poetic license, I’ll give you that.”

She actually laughs at that, surprising him. 

“It was too quiet in the mansion,” she says abruptly, and for a moment he almost misses her meaning. 

“That’s why you’re here,” he says after a beat. “Because _you_ didn’t want to be alone? Natasha—”

“You’re my best friend too, you know,” she says quietly, reminding him suddenly of the day, weeks ago, when he’d gotten dumb enough to admit the same thing to her. “If you apologize for that, I’m going to make you suffer.”

Clint opens his mouth, then closes it again, takes a breath and holds out an arm. “Come here.” 

“If you try to kiss me again—” says Natasha, breaking off abruptly when Lucky sits up and licks the side of her face.

“Does it count if it’s my dog doing the kissing?” laughs Clint, reaching out to ruffle golden fur approvingly. 

“No,” says Natasha. “He’s allowed to kiss me. He’s more charming than you are. And he smells better.” She leans forward a little, draping an arm around Lucky, who snuffles happily before sticking his nose into her hair. 

“Fair.”

“You ever wonder,” she asks, cocking her head toward the screen, “what the world would be like if you weren’t in it?”

“Well,” says Clint, something about her tone catching and twisting in his gut, “before this, I would’ve said at least my dog would miss me.”

“He would miss you,” says Natasha, dropping her arm. She shifts a little closer to the center of the couch, and this time Lucky flops down across both their laps like an exceptionally warm blanket. “I would miss you too.”

He can’t help thinking, again, of the tracksuits and their threats, of how tempting it is to simply leave town and stop being everyone’s problem. In this moment, though, death and destruction seem very far off. In this moment, things seem right. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he tells Natasha.

“Don’t get sappy,” she answers warningly. 

Clint laughs, and turns back to the television to watch miracles unfold.


End file.
